This research was carried out by an independent third party, using Be-IT’s database of over 2,500 individuals, our consultants’ extensive Linkedin contacts and a complementary social media campaign. The salary survey will also compare our direct results against other salary survey data from across the UK to try to obtain as accurate a picture as possible of the current wage levels pertaining to the many, varied roles in each different area of IT and computing. We shall report on the salary survey details separately.

In addition to the salary survey, we also asked respondents to answer a small number of additional questions about their employment history in 2015, their intentions for 2016 and what methods/sources they used when seeking a new job.

This is the first of a series of articles in which we’ll examine the response to these more qualitative elements of our study. Here, we set the scene and examine how many of our sample moved jobs in 2015 and how many intend to move in 2016.

In 2015, 55% of our respondents had moved jobs. As our database includes both permanent employees and contractors, this is perhaps unsurprising, especially as we noted that 17% of the sample (almost certainly largely consisting of contractors) had moved more than once in the year. However, even allowing for this, some 38% of respondents moved once in 2015 and this confirms the very active IT recruitment market and bears out the result of our survey last year, in which we recorded that 60% of respondents (in permanent jobs) said they would look for a new job in 2015. Clearly, a lot of them did! The reasons given in 2014 for people wishing to move in 2015 were largely to do with their perceived dissatisfaction with pay levels and limited career development opportunities. When we compared this to the reasons given in 2015 for people wishing to move in 2016, we saw far less discontent with pay than in the previous survey. We’ll have more to say about the reasons why people are moving jobs in our next article.

When we looked at the number who said they would move jobs in 2016, we see that last year’s figure is almost repeated, with 53% saying they intend to change their employer this year, 29% saying they will stay where they are and a further 18% undecided (see below). If even a small number of the ‘undecideds’ move job we’re likely to see a considerable majority of IT professionals seeking to change jobs this year.

What does this mean? Well, the fact that we see a continuation – to more or less the same level - of last year’s trend, suggests that the market continues to be very lively with considerable demand across every discipline, partly driven by the fact that, from the candidates’ perspective, it’s a sellers’ market and good people can command a premium salary.

It’s also important to note that this figure of over half our survey wanting to change jobs is mirrored by other, recent analysis. The year before, the CIPD noted that 37% of employees were looking to change jobs, while Investors in People said that 60% were unhappy at work and 57% were looking to change jobs (https://www.investorsinpeople.com/press/60-cent-uk-workers-not-happy-their-jobs) and more recently a study by Standard Life, as reported here (in 2016) suggests that over half of workers want to change their job.